Changing the system : from urban metabolism, system dynamics and the circular economy to circles of sustainability

Leaving aside comforting (and misleading) stories about the gradual changes that global warming is bringing, there is no way around the underlying reality. Over the next half-century, the planet will rapidly become increasingly uninhabitable for humans—except perhaps for uberwealthy who can afford to shield themselves from some of the intensifying changes (Wallace- Wells, 2019). The world is in crisis, and cities are at the centre of the current maelstrom. We are living in a complicated period during which we are struggling to find adequate ways to characterize the dominant sustainability challenges, let alone respond adequately to those challenges. In the face of this, a multitude of sustainability methods have been developed to better measure processes of human activity and their effect upon the planet. Methods of urban metabolism, industrial symbiosis, circular economics, and different kinds of system dynamics all offer alternative modes of measurement—some incredibly sophisticated….. Without wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater—that is, abandon the search for good systems methods for measuring change and impact just because existing methods are limited—the essay seeks to rework dominant approaches to modelling social and environmental challenges. This will be done in terms of four analytical tests, tests that provide the point of departure for the Circles of Social Life approach.